RandomThoughts on the State of Our Nation and Complacency



 

 



In America we have grown so used to not fighting (standing against, not physical fighting) for or against things the government, our schools, our local city councils, etc. forces on us or our children, that it's becoming harder and harder to recognize what true liberty looks like.  Now we are living in such times where if we don't stand up and say "NO" or Enough" we will lose our children, our free speech, our religious freedoms, etc.  You name it.  All is on the line now in our country.  Complacency is SO hard to fight.  The church has been fighting complacency forever, but it is not just in the church.  It's in our everyday lives  To me, it's almost as if we have ALL been brainwashed or indoctrinated to think, there is nothing we can do. Nothing really matters.  Just live your life, take care of your own and don't focus or think about the future or what's going on in the nation or even your neighbor's life.
Maybe if I put it out of my mind and don't think about it, everything will work itself out.  It's hard for me, but for some reason God has put a passon in me to try and wake people up and say, "Fight!"  Don't just keep dancing, drinking, socializing, going on vacations, or even just taking care of your own little family.  We should all be praying like never before, reading the Word and getting our marching orders for going into action. If Esther had not been willing to go before the king, she could not have saved her people.  To me, she is a perfect example of how God's people get involved in government affairs.  She had prayer covering because she had asked her people to be fasting and praying, but she also, had physical actions she had to complete in order for her people to be saved from certain death.  There are so many other examples of God's people getting involved and even radical, for example; Daniel, Shadrack, Meshack and Abedneg, just to name a few. If the Founding Fathers had been like us with the same mindset we have, America would have never gained her freedom from England. (Don't feel condemned.  I'm ranting at myself, too.)

I am passing on this e-mail I received describing a very disheartening experience of a 3rd grader with Common Core Math...

 

3.5.13 – THE HUFFINGTON POST

Mark Rice

Professor and chair of the Department of American Studies, St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York

Misadventures in the Common Core

Posted: 03/05/2013 11:12 am

My daughter -- a bright, fun-loving 8-year-old who isn't easily rattled -- was reduced to tears in school yesterday. Apparently, while working on a math lesson involving fractions, she wasn't "getting it" the way that she thought she should, and her frustration mounted and her eyes welled up and, later, when her teacher talked to her in the hallway on the way to gym class, she lost it and she cried and cried.

I know this because her teacher -- a committed professional who does wonderful work with her class of third-graders -- cared enough to call us at home to tell us. When asked, she said that lots of kids were feeling frustrated by this particular lesson. The reason, we learned, is New York's recent embrace of the "Common Core" that has been adopted by 46 states. It's the latest experiment put into place by educational policy experts who continually jockey to get the newest big ideas into the classroom.

When I first heard about the Common Core, I was excited. Many of the college students I teach are unprepared to do the kinds of textual analysis and critical thinking that I expect of them, and what I had heard about the Common Core made it seem promising. One article that I read in The Atlantic made it sound, well, revolutionary.

Maybe it will be. The Common Core might turn out to be one of the best reforms in K-12 education in decades. It's all still pretty new and its cumulative impact on the intellectual development of students might turn out to be a great thing. What I know right now, though, is that it is asking third graders to approach math in ways that seem terribly unsuited to them.

I don't just mean things like the worksheet that included a rectangle divided into six sections with written instructions asking students to shade one-fifth of it.

[Note: As I wrote the above sentence, my daughter -- who had been in bed for an hour and should have been asleep -- came downstairs in tears, saying that she was still upset by what happened in math class. After talking about her frustrations, she fell asleep beside me on the sofa.]

No, I'm not talking about the typographical error on an official New York State Common Core third-grade math worksheet, though such a boneheaded mistake does little to inspire confidence.

What I mean by math problems unsuited to third-graders are ones that go something like this: Two kids are served brownies. One kid, "Julian," eats one-half of a small brownie and the other kid, "Debbie," eats one-eighth of a big brownie. Julian claims that he ate more than Debbie (because one-half is more than one-eighth). The students are asked to explain why Julian's claim is false, using words and pictures, and then use words and pictures to make that supposedly false statement into a true statement.

I guess that what the students are supposed to realize is that because the brownies are different sizes (though what kind of adult would cut unequal-sized brownies for kids?), one-half isn't necessarily bigger than one-eighth. That's true, but without knowing the size of each brownie, there really isn't enough information to determine which brownie piece is bigger. Maybe Julian really did eat more than Debbie.

More to the point though, is this question: How in the world is that problem supposed to help a third-grader learn fractions? Third-graders are concrete thinkers and they are just learning the basics of fractions. Why throw in a poorly-written word problem that asks them to explain an abstract concept such as the idea that one-eighth of a larger whole may be bigger than one-half of a smaller whole? Until they fully understand the basics of halves and eighths -- and unless there is a picture showing the relative sizes of each whole -- such abstractions only muddy the waters of learning.

Then there is the problem of dividing a "whole" into two "halves," calling each half a new whole, and then asking the students to divide the new whole into new halves. My daughter looked at the problem and she knew that she wasn't seeing two new wholes. She was seeing two halves of the original whole that still stared back her from the page.

More insidious still is a worksheet that seems determined to confuse students by its use of two very similar sounding, and similar looking words. The instructions for Column A read: "The shape represents one whole. Write a fraction to describe the shaded part." Below the instructions are a variety of shapes with different fractions shaded. The same shapes and shades are found in Column B. This time students are instructed: "The shaded part represents one whole. Divide one whole to show the same unit fraction you wrote in A."

These third grade students are expected to keep in mind not only the lesson on fractions, but also the fine distinction between the words "shape" and "shade" in determining wholes and fractions. It's absurd.

I don't know how my daughter will do in math today or in the coming weeks. I hope that with her teacher's guidance, and with the support of her mother and me, she'll make the adjustments she needs to make in order to regain her confidence in understanding the math concepts that she was already beginning to understand before the new standards and their worksheets came along.

Until then, we'll just keep reassuring her that the problem isn't her ability to understand math; the problem is how she's being asked to understand math. The problem is the experimental "big idea" that she's unknowingly become part of.

(Note: All of the math problems I've described -- including the one with the typographical error -- can be found here.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-rice/common-core-math_b_2781092.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Another Concern About Common Core...

I hope this makes sense...


“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. Always remember these commands I give you today. Teach them to your children, and talk about them when you sit at home and walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them down and tie them to your hands as a sign. Tie them on your forehead to remind you, and write them on your doors and gates.”
Matthew 6:5-9

  In the old days when most moms stayed home the above verse was a little easier to do. Mom was always home. All those little incidences which came up during the day were perfect opportunities to insert little “lessons about God.” Later when the child entered school, you could still feel pretty comfortable that your same values were being reinforced at school. Teachers could freely talk about God, read the Bible, and pray without any complaint or problem. The Ten Commandments were posted in every school, at the courthouse, even in some businesses. Things have changed so much in our schools, in our homes and even in our churches.

Now in order to protect our children, we have to take a more vigilant stance. We can’t just sit by and hope for the best. We have to become watchmen on the walls of our schools. If we don’t, we are going to lose our children, lose our way of life, and our freedom.

One way I fear this may be done is through indoctrination of our kids while they are at school and never have I felt this so close upon our doorstep as now with the adoption of the Common Core Standards. There are many things that trouble me with Common Core but I would like to address one of the teaching methods “clustering.”
I have watched a couple of videos showing teachers teaching a Common Core lesson and what stood out was how they break up into small groups and openly discuss things or work together on math problems. It seems pretty innocent on first glance, but as I watched 2 or 3, I had a few thoughts come to mind. They do the clustering in the reading/language arts and the math. In math it supposedly helps the students work to figure out the problem together, realize there are more than one way to get the answer through “discovery”. In reading/language arts they are given an informational text and they read it, discuss it in whatever context the teacher has directed them, questioning, discussing, debating. 70% of the reading in Common Core is for informational text and only 30% is for teaching the great literature classics. 

Depending on what types of documents and the directions given by the teacher, as I watched I had an observation about what was going on. This was a perfect way to get the kids to “group think” or think like every other person in the group. In these small groups (3-4 to a group) the kids are very closely seated at different tables discussing often controversial subjects. 

Can you imagine: there’s the boisterous child who always has an opinion, the intellectual child who thinks he knows it all and the quiet, timid child in one group. Whose opinion do you think will matter most? I don’t think it would be the quiet, timid child although, we as adults realize that being quiet doesn’t mean you don’t know anything or that your opinion wouldn’t be valid, but children are not as wise about those things. They are often easily swayed by the more confident, boisterous child, so that’s why I think constant “clustering” like this over and over, day by day, year to year could cause kids to care more about what their peers think than their own opinion. Everything becomes relative. Peer pressure, to be apart of the group or cluster and feel accepted by the group or cluster, etc. could become more important to the child than what he has been raised to think by his parents. The group, his peers, becomes more important than his principles instilled in him by his parents and depending on the teacher, this could leave the child wide open to be guided into beliefs he would have never accepted had he/she not been constantly questioning, debating and being guided by the group and the teacher or the curriculum depending on what types of articles or documents and lessons they are given to “cluster” about. I know peer pressure has always been a problem but I think this could become “peer pressure on steroids.”There could also be questions about the informational texts being used. How do we know if the information is good and evenly discusses both sides of the issue?


Here are a few examples of classroom assignments:


  “Argue for a life of sexual freedom picturing a spontaneous sexual affair that hurts and harms no one.” (“The Storm” by Kat Chopin) · Give a “logical explanation” for Timothy McVeigh’s “unquenchable fury against the U.S. Government.”
· Write an essay about illegal immigration. “Aside from providing the United States with a source of manual labor, what other good do illegal immigrants contribute to American society? Think of the intangibles they bring.”
· Read “Drugs” by Gore Vidal. “Write an essay in which you use critical thinking skills … concerning the legalization of drugs.”
Students are asked to write about whose fault it was that “pushers got the kids hooked on heroine and deaths increased dramatically.” The assignment asks “Whose fault? Evil men like the Mafiosi? Permissive Dr. Spock? Wild-eyed Dr. Leary? No. The Government of the United States was responsible for those deaths.”

The use of profanity and vulgarity in textbooks that are aligned with Common Core is shocking and well beyond the mores approved by most Alabama parents.
  Parents this is VERY serious. These types of activities used daily or even weekly year after year from K-12 could be dangerous. I see this as a type of indoctrination or undermining of the parents beliefs, values and principles and putting in their place whatever the “group” has decided. These are children, not adults who can not make true assessments about many different situations simply for the fact of maturity and life experiences. We know wisdom comes from God but also from maturing and having life experiences of successes and failures and from the advice of your parents or other adults you know and trust. Last of all, knowing these types of lessons will be taught, do you trust the people in charge of Common Core who are setting the standards, making up the lessons, eventually recommending curriculum and doing the testing ?

Remember: President Obama’s Secretary of Education has characterized Common Core as a “revolution” to help in the “battle for social justice”.

Think about all of the things this administration has done in the last four years. Don’t you think he will be just as radical and persistent in getting what he wants in education. Why do we have to hand Alabama’s children to them on a silver platter? Here, do with them what you will…..and they most certainly will.

Call and e-mail your senate education committee members and your own senator Monday through Wednesday.
They are listed at the top of this page: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/senate/senatecommittees/senatecommittees.html#anchor539453
 Contact info for all the senators here: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/senate/senators/senateroster_alpha.html
We need to bombard them with our calls!

President Barack Obama’s Complete List of Historic Firsts:

(I copied these from one of my fb friends, but I think this is a great list & there is more that could be added....)

IM DOWN RIGHT SICK AND TIRED OF PEOPLE SAYING OBAMA HASNT DONE ANYTHING WHILE IN OFFICE!!!!

President Barack Obama’s Complete List of Historic Firsts:

• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government

• First President to Violate the War Powers Act

• First President to Orchestrate the Sale of Murder Weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels

• First President to issue an unlawful “recess-appointment” while the U.S. Senate remained in session (against the advice of his own Justice Department).

• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

• First President to Defy a Federal Judge’s Court Order to Cease Implementing the ‘Health Care Reform’ Law

• First President to halt deportations of illegal aliens and grant them work permits, a form of stealth amnesty roughly equivalent to “The DREAM Act”, which could not pass Congress

• First President to Require All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party

• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs — and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs

• First President to sue states for requiring valid IDs to vote, even though the same administration requires valid IDs to travel by air

• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters

• First President to sign into law a bill that permits the government to “hold anyone suspected of being associated with terrorism indefinitely, without any form of due process. No indictment. No judge or jury. No evidence. No trial. Just an indefinite jail sentence.”

• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat

• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases

• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler

• First President to “Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions”

• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees

• First President to Terminate America’s Ability to Put a Man into Space.

• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places

• First President to Have a Law Signed By an ‘Auto-pen’ Without Being “Present”

• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It

• First President to Tell a Major Manufacturing Company In Which State They Are Allowed to Locate a Factory

• First President to refuse to comply with a House Oversight Committee subpoena.

• First President to File Lawsuits Against the States He Swore an Oath to Protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN, etc.)

• First President to Withdraw an Existing Coal Permit That Had Been Properly Issued Years Ago

• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case

• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts

• First President to allow Mexican police to conduct law enforcement activities on American soil

• First President to Golf 90 or More Times in His First Three Years in Office

But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-

energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc. By: Terri Thomas

HB 541, Alabama's Charter School Bill (The Education Options Act of 2012): Suggestions for Improvement

The problem: HB 541 must be amended to insure Alabama offers the best possible charter schools for our students. Many states are now trying to correct serious problems with their charter schools that we can avoid if our legislature takes its time and diligently studies and debates all aspects of the bill. Regarding Mississippi's pending charter school bill, their House Education Committee Chairman John Moore recently stated, "I don't want the biggest education legislation in years to be a big error. We have to be very careful. "We don't want to unleash a monster."


AL"s HB 541 authorizes charter schools to borrow money and issue bonds, but if they go out of business while in debt as many in the nation have, the state is stuck with paying the creditors. This potentially creates a significant liability for the state. Eric Fleischauer wrote in the Decatur Times on April 2, 2012, "A few states have laws that managed to create beneficial charter schools without devastating public schools in the process. A bill pending in the Alabama Legislature, however, fails to find this balance."


Fleischauer also warns that the bill does not limit charter schools to low-performing districts. (It is commendable that the legislature is currently debating amending this part of the bill. ) Fleischauer also mentioned that although the bill restricts awarding charters to non-profits and secular groups, a charter school can turn around and contract with for-profit or secular groups for management and operations, including educational services.

A huge consideration we in AL likely will be facing if this bill is passed in its current form is Turkish charter schools, yet few people are discussing it in our state. This rapidly growing network of public charter schools has become a rapidly growing problem in many states. The entity in AL involved in the controversial Gulen Turkish Charter Movement is the Peace Valley Foundation in Huntsville, and it is part of a regional group in the Southeast called the Istanbul Institute. A guest article by Sharon Higgins featured in Valerie Strauss's 3/27/12 Washington Post column explains this issue well. Since this subject is virtually unknown by our legislators and citizens, I will include a good deal of Ms. Higgins' article for your convenience. The entire column can be read here: www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/largest-charter-network-in-us-schools-tied-to-turkey/2012/03/23/gIQAoaFzcS_blog.html

Higgins wrote: "The largest charter school network in the United States is operated by people in and associated with the Gulen Movement (GM), a secretive and controversial Turkish religious sect. With 135 schools enrolling more than 45,000 students, this network is substantially larger than KIPP, the well-known charter management organization with only 109 schools. A lack of awareness about this situation persists despite it being addressed in a national paper and in articles about Gulen charter schools in Utah, Arizona, , Illinois, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, Georgia, and North Carolina.. Ms. Higgins mentioned it has been reported that "the FBI and the Departments of Labor and Education are investigating practices at these schools.”


"The concerns raised about the charter schools in the GM network have related to questionable admissions practices; the channeling of school funds to close associates; abuse of contractors; participation in biased, GM-created competitions; incidents of bribing; using the schools to generate political connections; science fair projects being done by teachers; unfair hiring and termination practices; and more. Still, authorizers continue to approve charter applications, ill-informed parents continue to use them, and taxpayers keep funding the schools – all without much discussion."


"The Gulen Movement originated in Turkey in the late 1960s.... Its members are followers of Fethullah Gulen (b. 1941) a self-exiled Turkish preacher [an imam] who has been living on a secluded compound in rural Pennsylvania since 1998. Members call themselves hizmet, meaning “volunteer services” movement. The GM conducts four primary activities around the world: a media empire, business organizations, an enormous number of Turkish culture-promoting and interfaith dialog organizations, and a network of schools in over 100 countries, a large portion of which are U.S. charter schools."


"After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the GM began to establish schools outside of Turkey, first in the newly established republics of Central Asia and then beyond. One expert noted that the “...worldwide extent of Fethullah Gulen’s educational network testifies to the internationalist, even imperialist, nature of the movement. Last year an analyst viewed the raison d'être for the schools “spreading across the globe” in this way: “Students will learn how to speak Turkish, the national anthem, how to be the 'right kind of Muslim', etc. In essence, it buys [the GM] loyalty.”


"The first Gulen charter school was opened in 1999. U.S. officials have known about the movement’s involvement in charter schools since at least 2006 when our Istanbul consulate noticed that a large number of Turkish men, suspected to be GM-affiliated, were seeking visas to work at charter schools. A company specializing in geopolitical analysis reported in 2010 that the GM was running “...more than 90 charter public schools in at least 20 states.”


"Board members of Gulen charter schools are primarily Turkish or Turkic and often can be tied to other Gulenist organizations. GM schools around the world emphasize math, science, and technology, and always provide Turkish cultural instruction. Turkish or Turkic individuals, almost all male, are imported (referred to as “international” teachers) to teach those subjects and serve as school administrators. They sometimes transfer to other schools, but only those within the movement’s network. Around the world, local teachers are usually hired for elementary grades and the non-Gulen favored subjects. The charter schools have been criticized for importing so many teachers but defend their practice by claiming that they are unable to find qualified Americans. "


" ...in 2009, readers of Sabah were presented with an account of GM insiders discussing how the U.S. charter schools serve the movement’s goals: “...through education, we can teach tens of thousands of people the Turkish language and our national anthem, introduce them to our culture and win them over. And this is what the Gulen Movement is striving for....A Turkish observer remarked, “No society would tolerate this big of an organization being this untransparent.” When the GM has been exposed involuntarily or criticized, it has been known to respond with evasive measures or defensive attacks. Because of our charter school system, the United States is the only country where the Gulen Movement has been able to establish schools which are fully funded with public money. "


"Gulen charter schools regularly take students to Turkey. The movement’s interfaith dialog and Turkish culture-promoting organizations also provide Turkey trips to academics, journalists, politicians and other public officials*. Tours include sightseeing as well as visits to GM-affiliated institutions (news outlets, schools, etc.). A special feature of these guided “cultural immersion” trips is at least one visit to the home of a Turkish family, with up to three different home visits within nine days. A GM insider once explained that hosting visitors is a way for members to contribute to the cause. It is extremely likely that American travelers don’t realize that their experience in Turkey has been carefully designed to be a concentrated and sustained exposure to the social and political views of one religious group. It’s also likely that they do not understand exactly why their trips were made to be so inexpensive, or even free."


"Concerns about this group have arisen in other countries, too, especially about their schools being used to recruit members, and spread Turkish culture and fundamentalist religious ideas. There has been wide speculation on what the Gulen Movement really wants." {Recently while Mississippi;'s legislature has been working on a charter school bill, Jackson's Clarion Ledger warned readers that "A Turkish foundation ...could be among those seeking to operate charter schools in Mississippi if state lawmakers clear the way.} Mahmut Gok, Mississippi representative for the Raindrop Turkish House... said the Cosmos Foundation {a Gulen affiliate} might be interested. A group of Turkish professionals started the Houston-based Cosmos Foundation, now the largest charter school operator in Texas. The foundation runs 33 Harmony Schools in all the major cities in Texas, educating more than 16,000 children and receiving more than $100 million in taxpayer monies." See: www.clarionledger.com/article/20120305/NEWS010504/203050324/Outside-firms-could-among-suitors-charter-schools. The Ledger explained, "In a story last year, The New York Times questioned whether any taxpayer funds are going to support followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher who teaches a moderate brand of Islam and promotes a philosophy of "peace, mutual respect, the culture of coexistence." The schools import hundreds of teachers from Turkey each year, according to a 2010 USA Today report.


Our neighbor to the north, Tennessee, also has had problems with the Gulen-affiliated Knox Carter Academy in Tennessee as evidenced by this video: :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM-Sy1sIef0&context=C35c3836ADOEgsToPDskKWr51Jg0KJ-4LT_WgJNAlf

A website with extensive information on Turkish Charter schools and organizations in TN as well as in GA is located at http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com; Another highly respected website with Turkish Charter schools information is located at: www.peytonwolcott.com



=======================================================================================================================

How could AL legislators improve HB 541? Some suggestions for starters:


1. Amend the AL charter school bill to mandate that charters must provide proof of US citizenship for all charter school operator board members and top 5 highest paid administrators. In addition, mandate names, titles, and biographies be posted online at the school website for all charter operator board members and top 5 highest paid administrators. (KIPP Charter Schools already does this.)


2. Add language that a chartering authority may not approve a charter school application unless it limits its staff positions for teachers, administrators, ancillary support personnel or other employees to not more than 5% of the total number of positions at a single school being holders of a non-immigrant foreign worker H1B or J1 visa.


3. Amend language to clarify that charter schools cannot contract with for-profit or religious groups for instructional services.


4 Amend language to mandate all charter schools must offer health insurance and retirement benefits.


5. Add language to require that the source and amount of all gifts and/or grants be posted on-line.


6. Change language so that only local schools can issue charters, and applicants who are turned down can appeal to the state school board, which is an elected board.. Do not set up an appointed board for Charter School Application Review.


7. Insure legislation does not authorize charter schools to issue bonds or borrow money.


8. Clarify whether charter schools must use the same standards/courses of study and assessments as other AL public schools.


As our legislature discusses this important bill, and as the public becomes better informed on the issue and shares their suggestions with their representatives, many excellent ideas should be generated. Just think--Alabama could end up with the best charter schools in the nation.

Contact your Alabama legislators today and let the know what changes you'd like to see in the bill. here: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/misc/zipsearch.html

Share your comments here: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120404/NEWS/120404017/Charter-school-bill-scaled-back?odyssey=nav%7Chead on Eric Fleichaurer's blog titled "Charter School Bill Scaled Back."


Betty Peters
District 2 Representative
AL State Board of Education
526 Beatrice Rd.
Kinsey, AL 36303
334/ 794- 8024
bpeters@centurytel.net

Charter School Bill Has Problems

Charter bill has problems

A few states have laws that managed to create beneficial charter schools without devastating public schools in the process. A bill pending in the Alabama Legislature, however, fails to find this balance.

Eric Fleischauer Capital considerations

House Bill 541, sponsored by Phil Williams, R-Huntsville, also creates enormous potential liability for the state.

Charter schools survive on taxpayer money. They receive all federal, state and local taxpayer funds that otherwise would go to the public school district that serves each student they recruit.

HB 541 authorizes charter schools to borrow money and issue bonds. If they go out of business while in debt — as many in the nation have — the state is stuck paying the creditors. "The Legislature finds that the state has a moral obligation to repay any bonds issued by a public charter school," according to HB 541.

The bill fails in the goal of limiting charter schools to low-performing districts.

In districts with no "persistently low-performing schools," the elected school board has the final say in whether to approve a charter school.

In districts with a single low-performing school, though, the decision is made by a state agency called the Charter School Application Review Council. Its nine members are appointed, not elected, with the governor's five appointees having control. Remarkably, each of the members of the council "shall have demonstrated ... commitment to charter schooling."

The low-performing school could be an elementary school on the north side of the district, but its existence permits a charter high school to open on the south side of the district. The charter can recruit its students from anywhere in the district. Even if the district improves its low-performing school, the charter school is there to stay.

List changes

The list of districts with a low-performing school changes every year. As recently as 2010, both Morgan County and Decatur City school districts had at least one such school.

Because every student a charter school recruits reduces the funding of the school district, public educators have expressed concerns about legislation that would reduce state regulations for charters without reducing them for public schools.

HB 541 purports to address this issue by creating "innovative school systems," public school systems which, if the state approves, can operate with more flexibility. The problem is it proceeds to set forth a nearly all- inclusive list of state requirements that cannot be waived.

A charter school, on the other hand, "is exempt from all statutes and rules applicable to a public school, a local school board, or a local school system."

Private involvment

Educators also worry about a charter school system dominated by private corporations. Most of these concerns focus on the front end of the competition between charter and public schools.

A corporation has every incentive to invest heavily in marketing and facilities in the early years, knowing that — unlike the public school with which it is competing — it can operate at a loss for a few years. Services eventually will decline, but only after the school district has had to close schools that have lost both students and funding.

While HB 541 only allows nonprofit organizations to create charter schools, it provides plenty of room for abuse.

A nonprofit organization can, under HB 541, pay a private company to take over management and operations of the charter school. Private companies can give unlimited gifts to the charter school. The likelihood is high that the nonprofit organization that creates the school will be a mere shell of the for-profit company that runs it.

While charters cannot offer religious programming under the bill, they can hold classes in a church and receive gifts from a church.

Charter schools in other states rely heavily on video technology so they can avoid spending tax dollars on teachers. To the extent they hire teachers, HB 541 places essentially no limit on the qualifications of those they hire.

Anyone with "unique expertise" or "unique experience" — regardless of education — could serve as a charter-school teacher. Even without unique expertise or experience, a person could teach for two years without teacher certification.

As if the competition created by HB 541 was not lopsided enough, charter schools can demand services from their public-school competitors. They can, for example, require that a public school provide their students — at actual cost — with meals, special-needs instruction, English-learner instruction and even bus transportation.

Any disputes over these demands are resolved not by the school board, but by the pro-charter review council.

The charter review council can approve up to 50 charter schools in the state through 2016. After that, there is no limit.

In an irony that may give a hint at the intent of the drafters, the bill permits charter schools to buy closed public schools under preferential terms.

At least until the state-backed loans come due, there are likely to be plenty on the market.

Contact Eric Fleischauer at eric@decaturdaily.com or www.mile304.com.

US House Trying To Stop Obama's Takeover Of Public Schools

[3.31.12 -- Finally, the U. S. House has stopped pussyfooting around the “elephant in the room” – Common Core Standards and Race to the Top. For more than a year, a number of us have begged the House to cut the funding for Common Core Standards/Race to the Top. Once the national standards, national curriculum, national assessments, national teacher evaluation, and national database are in place in the public schools of our nation, it would be almost impossible to yank them out by the root. The national assessments are moving along pretty fast now and are only a few months away from being ready for implementation.

The following report from the U. S. House Education and Workforce Committee is the most strongly worded one yet and shows that this Committee totally gets it! The Obama administration is trying to drive their social justice agenda into the public schools through coercion and overreach, and this House committee is finally “calling them out.”

Please contact the members of this House Committee to express your support for their efforts to push back Obama and Arne Duncan’s federal takeover of the public schools. To see the names of all the members, please go to:

http://edworkforce.house.gov/Committee/SubcommitteesJurisdictions.htm

– Donna Garner]

March 29, 2012

U. S. Congress – House Education and the Workforce Committee, Congressman John Kline, Chairman By the Numbers: The Secretary of Education's Startling Record of Executive Overreach

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on the president’s budget and policy proposals for Fiscal Year 2013.

Since assuming his position in the president’s cabinet in January 2009, Secretary Duncan has proven to be an active and visible member of the administration. However, a look at some of the numbers defining his tenure in Washington reveals a startling record of executive overreach and meddling in state and local education decisions.

Number of Dollars the President Proposed for the Secretary’s Slush Fund (Known as Race to the Top) Since 2009: 7.45 billion
In 2009, Secretary Duncan announced a new grant competition to pressure states to undertake the administration’s preferred K-12 policies. The program has provided the secretary sole discretion over a multi-billion dollar slush fund of taxpayer dollars. The administration continues to expand Race to the Top’s size by declaring new phases of the original program and extending its reach into early childhood learning and higher education. So far, the president has proposed a total of $7.45 billion from taxpayers for the secretary to spend on his own policy priorities.

Number of Conditions the Secretary Imposed on States Seeking Access to the Secretary’s Slush Fund: ­­110
To be considered for a Race to the Top grant, states were strongly encouraged to enact specific “reforms” preferred by the secretary. Many states felt coerced to adopt the Common Core Standards and more than 100 other prescriptive federal requirements in order to compete for Race to the Top grants. Instead of operating a transparent competition, the secretary chose to base the program on bias, chance, and coercion.

Number of States Facing Delays in Implementing Phase 1 and 2 Race to the Top Grants: 9 Eleven states and the District of Columbia won grants under the first two phases of Race to the Top. Yet, according to an official assessment of the program, nearly all these “winners” are facing significant challenges, delaying implementation of the secretary’s preferred policies.

Number of Plans the Secretary Proposed to Sidestep Congressional Efforts to Reform No Child Left Behind: 1
Instead of working with Congress to rewrite elementary and secondary education law, the secretary has advanced a conditional waivers scheme that allows states to opt out of certain provisions in No Child Left Behind if they adopt his education agenda. This move embraces temporary changes that only exacerbate the challenges facing schools, and represents a clear overreach of the secretary’s authority.

Number of Conditions States Must Adopt to Get a Waiver From No Child Left Behind: ?
The secretary’s conditional waiver process has been shrouded in secrecy from the beginning. After receiving the first round of waiver applications, he sent letters “suggesting” states change their applications to improve their chances at obtaining a waiver. The whims of the secretary direct the waivers process, leaving states in the dark about the true cost and number of conditions the secretary may mandate.

Number of Times Department Sued for Overreach in the Last Year: 2In July 2011, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities filed a legal challenge to the department’s regulatory overreach in implementing its gainful employment regulations. In February 2012, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit contesting the department’s effort to amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act without authority from Congress. A report last year by the Congressional Research Service raised concerns about the secretary’s authority to grant conditional waivers, leaving the department open to even more legal scrutiny.
The numbers above show a clear pattern of executive overreach, with no end in sight.
That’s why committee Republicans are advancing legislation to revamp No Child Left Behind and reign in the authority of the secretary of education. Together, the Student Success Act (H.R. 3989) and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act (H.R. 3990) will return control for K-12 education to state and local leaders, negating the need for the secretary to coerce states into following his education agenda.

Committee Republicans welcome the support of the secretary and the administration in advance lasting reform for America’s schools.